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Tribunal and court decisions

Tribunal decisions

The Tribunal’s decisions are not binding on Tribunal members, like court decisions. However, it may be useful to consult and refer to past Tribunal decisions, especially if the facts and issues are similar to an appeal before the Tribunal or if there are no court decisions on an issue. It is also helpful to understand how the Tribunal has decided other appeals.

The Tribunal publishes all Appeal Division decisions and a selection of General Division decisions.

General Division decisions are chosen for publication when they meet one or more of the following criteria:

interprets or explains an area of law;

raises a new or interesting point of law;

explains a new departure in case law; or

has unusual facts.

The Tribunal is committed to continuing to publish new General Division decisions of interest.

Since January 1, 2018, the bibliographic citations of all decisions issued by the Tribunal align with the Canadian bibliographic standard. This approach incorporates the following elements:

case name, 2018 SST 123

the case name;

the year the decision was published (ex. 2018);

the acronym for the Social Security Tribunal (SST); and

a number that corresponds to the sequence of that decision based on the total number of decisions the Tribunal published to date, for that year.

Tribunal decisions published between 2013 and 2017 use a different bibliographic citation approach with following elements:

case name, 2017 SSTADEI 123

the case name;

the year the decision was published (ex. 2017, 2016, …);

the acronym for the Social Security Tribunal (SST);

the two-letter code of the division that rendered the decision (GD for General Division or AD for Appeals Division);

the two-letter code of the section that rendered the decision (EI for Employment Insurance or IS for Income Security, whether Canada Pension Plan or Old Age Security);

the number that corresponds to the sequence of that decision based on the total number of decisions the Tribunal published to date, for that year.